Well it seems like my time of distrusting anything the Liberals say is certainly coming to a middle.

Let other countries buy, own and run our airlines? “What could go wrong?”

Yeah but the sun burns probably millions of people every day and causes cancer, besides it’s big enough to take care of itself.

And I’ve already explained before, that “face” is just conveniently aligned shadows that make it look like a face. There’s no actual face there. Further analysis clearly showed that it was in fact a pyramid, just like the ones aliens built here in ancient Egypt. /s

What did Mars ever do to deserve any of this? It’s just out there minding its own business not bothering anybody. Into the sun where at least they can be used as fuel, that would be a better use for them.

Correct, it is also a sign that it is winning that it keeps attracting (and largely still beating) direct competitors. The Switch 2 can’t have any realistic competitors because the ecosystem is so closed off and exclusive, it’s a monopoly in its space.

Despite countless attempts by numerous companies to monopolize various parts of the PC experience, it continues to foster relentless competition, and rather than attempting to lock in their little bit of monopolization, Steam Deck is too busy breaking other, much more realistic attempts at complete monopolization of the PC ecosystem (Looking at you, Microsoft Windows). Even Steam’s own game distribution dominance is a far cry from Microsoft’s near-complete control of much of the desktop OS stack. It is a genuine pleasure to see Steam Deck and the hard work done by things like Proton (and to a lesser extent, improving support from hardware vendors most notably AMD) finally actually moving the needle on that.

Agreed, the freelance contractor “gig economy” these apps use is a crime against the labor force. I have no idea why we tolerate this toxic business model in a civilized country with labor laws.

Don’t worry, they’ll tattoo your NFT on for you when they send you to the work camps.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Ea-nasir Industries Heritage Group. Our guarantee is as solid as a stone tablet!

lemmy.ml is a trap run by literal communists (who also happen to be the main developers of the lemmy software) it’s basically like the Lion King scene “but what’s that shadowy place?” “oh that’s lemmy.ml, we don’t go there”

But the nice thing about federation is that even thought it’s run by the developers, we don’t have to participate there and they evidently don’t want us “sheep” to participate there either so we can have a mutually beneficial relationship of not having anything to do with one another.

mi sasa, fosho im gut!

When something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Carney definitely seemed to be entering that territory in the run up to the election, so I’ve always reserved some suspicion. At this point if they form a coalition government with the conservatives, as laughable as that idea seems, then we know we’ve definitely been had.

You can throw away rags. It doesn’t feel great, but they’re not that expensive depending on how you get them and honestly a shockingly enormous quantity of old clothing ends up in oceans or landfill no matter what, so if some of that clothing does an intermediate step getting recycled into rags before getting thrown out it’s probably not such a big deal.

That said, Scott’s towels are pretty awesome, I love them and would find it a bit hard to live without them too. I’m minimizing my use of them now and still have a pretty good stockpile but I’m curious if there are any good alternatives too.

Yes please. Let’s hurry up and skip as much of this cautious flirting as we can, and get to the part where we fuck (…the enemies of democracy)

Well those are definitely some thread titles I’ll never be able to unsee. Fucking hell. Going to bleach my eyes now brb.

There was literally a commit only a few hours ago and there doesn’t seem to be any announcement about it being archived or abandoned. I feel like this has to be either a mistake or some disgruntled ownership drama but I think it’s pretty fair to assume it’s not abandoned, however this shakes out there will still be people working on it or some fork of it.

This still seems like a wild conspiracy theory to me, and yet, I wish them luck because I don’t see what significant harm could come out of it and maybe they’re right, and even if they’re not the search ought to be interesting. Sort of like Oak Island. Search on, you crazy sleuths, and let me know if you find something.

Will they be powered by… let me guess… gas turbines? Like all the other hyperscale datacenters that are being developed now? Or is bell constructing some new wind farms and hydro reservoirs we don’t know about? Or are we just “letting the market decide?”

I’m not trying to sugar coat it, I don’t think it’s going to be roses and daffodils in the housing market under this plan. Carney’s not going to be doing the Oprah show giveaway, “You! get a home! and YOU! get a home! EVERYBODY gets a home!” with everyone dancing and cheering. The new homes he’s talking about building, the “war time housing” is not going to be anyone’s dream home. It’s going to be cheap ticky tacky crap, it’s going to be ugly, it’s going to be second-best, it’s going to be stigmatized (hopefully not too severely). Let’s get that out of the way. But the goal is that they’ll be safe, sturdy, reliable and functional, and hopefully energy efficient, if they’re done right. I’ll be the first to admit the government doesn’t have a good track record at this. Hopefully this, with the amount of attention focused on it, is what changes that. The way I see it, all it has to do is be an improvement over the current situation where some people are living 3 or 4 generations in a home, or a dozen students or immigrants, with beds in living rooms, garages, basements, anywhere people can sleep, often just renting rooms, or even just “a bed”. Or where immigrants and refugees have been living “temporarily” in hotels for years (on the taxpayer dollar) making those hotels unavailable for guests. This is a reality, and this is happening. The goal is not luxury and perfection, the goal is just to be better than that, to be an improvement in the situation, and I think that’s very achievable.

The affordability increase for the people with the stagnant salary you’re describing, comes from the fact that those people will be lowering their expectations (or actually raising their expectations in many cases because a lot of them have simply given up now and are living with parents or other groups) and buying these lower-priced, lower-end homes (which really don’t exist at the moment, which may be why it’s hard to picture this choice) and accepting that they come with compromises but at least you get a decent, detached house with a roof over your head that you might be able to reasonably start a family in. Or they’ll go further into debt to buy something nicer and better, like the stuff at the current lowest-end of the market, which will be possible because more credit will be available to be extended to them.

This on its own doesn’t inflate the price of the rest of the housing market, it reduces it, because there are fewer buyers desperately scrabbling for all the previously existing housing stock, more supply balanced against the same demand. If that’s the only thing that we did, and it was done in a vacuum where we stopped all population growth and rent-seeking and all other factors contributing to housing inflation, there would ONLY be downward pressure on prices. Realistically, we know the downward pressure will be counteracted by those and other factors, and those will have to be addressed separately, which means this home-building program will have to be pretty significant to even maintain stable price levels in the current environment but we’ll have to wait and see what actually comes out of it and what else is done to manage the rest of the market and the rest of the economy too. It’s all connected.

I agree, it’s not fair or ideal. We face a huge challenge on the price and income side of things and it is not an area that is easy to solve. That’s why I think it’s smart that he’s focusing on the things that are (relatively) easier to solve, like creating more supply of more right-size, right-place, budget-oriented homes, and providing more access to cheap debt so that people can afford both those budget-oriented homes and the even more inflated prices in the rest of the market, even if they don’t get the additional income. I think those are not only achievable goals, but are going to improve the situation in a measurable way, even if it doesn’t “solve” it in the ideal sense and still leaves Canadians with a lot of (partially government-backed) debt.

To paraphrase Batman, it’s not the solution we deserve, but it is the solution we need right now.

I don’t know what his plan is on the longer term for dealing with Canada’s low productivity and lagging incomes, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

I don’t know why you’re missing this part of the equation:

Making homeownership more accessible is lowering prices relative to purchasing power.

You said it yourself. The other side of that equation is purchasing power. Remember that doesn’t just mean income or grants, it’s purchasing power. Doing things like removing tax burden, increasing mortgage terms, lowering interest rates and guaranteeing lower credit mortgages all improve purchasing power. This changes the ratio of prices to purchasing power, making homes more affordable WITHOUT lowering home prices and potentially even raising them. I get that it’s not the massive drop in home prices many people want to see, but it will make housing more affordable.